


The Blood of the Wolf

by lovebeyondmeasure



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, BAMF Maria Hill, F/F, Latina Maria Hill, Lesbian Maria Hill, Lesbian Natasha Romanov, Not Beta Read, Werewolf Natasha Romanov
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-20 09:08:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16552940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovebeyondmeasure/pseuds/lovebeyondmeasure
Summary: “Yes,” Maria says. “La sangre de los lobos.I’m not afraid of it.”“But are you afraid of me?” Natalia asks.Yes, of course.Maria shrugs.+++++or, the Robotic Werewolf Lesbian Natasha Romanov fic.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lextenou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lextenou/gifts), [kaerstyne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaerstyne/gifts).



> By popular demand! (And by popular demand, I mean two people made big eyes at me and I started writing immediately.) I've never written Werewolves before and I don't read fics featuring them either so I'm just gonna make up whatever the hell I want, just a heads up. 
> 
> I don't have much of a plot for this, so I can't guarantee regular updates, but I have a direction and at least two or three more chapters before I call it quits. 
> 
> And as always, thank you for joining me on the journey my muse is taking!

“Is that the new operative everyone’s been whispering about?”

Maria Hill hated being out of the loop, and returning from a three-week op in Kabul had left her decidedly so. She wasn’t one for water-cooler gossiping, but when the occasion called for it, well, she could stoop a little. 

“The redhead? Yeah,” one of the other agents said. “Russian. Barton brought her in- apparently she’s ex-KGB, went off the rez a while back.”

“She’s ex-KGB? She looks barely old enough to be recruited now,” Maria whispered back. 

“I know, right?” 

“Anyone know what they’re planning to do with her?”

“Right now they’re just seeing what she knows and what she can do. And there are rumors…”

Maria watched as the Redhead followed Fury around a corner. Her bearing was military, sharp and poised, ready to move in any direction in a moment. 

“Rumors?” she prompted. The agent glanced around, a glaring giveaway. Maria noted it mentally to mention to their superior later.

“That the Russians were looking for really specific things.”

“Like?” God, this was like pulling teeth. 

“Werewolves,” the agent whispered. “ And vampires.”

“Working for a human government?” This, now, this was news. Weres and Vamps usually kept to their own enclaves, staying out of petty human squabbles and warfare. Only diplomats and renegades would engage with humans at that level.

“Yeah,” the agent with the info said, looking satisfied to have dropped the bombshell. “You can imagine it’s got Fury pretty riled up, the idea of a whole group of Suckers and Claws working for who-fucking-knows.”

“And she’s scary trained, too,” another agent puts in, looking thrilled to finally have something to add. “Like, I thought she was a robot. She doesn’t show any emotions or anything. Just totally still and calm all the time, but you just know she could kill you with whatever you have in your pockets.”

“She wouldn’t need that, just a full moon,” the first speaker said, waggling their brows. 

Maria knew that depending on how developed a Were the Redhead was, she wouldn’t even need a moon, just a lack of sunlight; but this didn’t seem like the time to share her expertise with the class. 

She slipped away, taking a slightly circuitous route over to one of the clearance-only elevators, and going up. The moment the doors opened, she was back in the thick of it, where she belonged. 

“Hill!” Fury’s voice cut through the chatter. “My office.”

It was good to be back.


	2. Chapter 2

Fury’s office was nearly the same, but the extra bodies in it made it seem smaller.

“Glad you’re finally back, Hill,” Fury said in a tone that told her it was not because he had missed her. 

“Good to be back, sir,” she said with a nod, not bothering to take a seat. The occupants of the two seats by the desk turned to face her, and- oh, Maria suddenly understood what the agent had meant about the Redhead’s gaze. It was abundantly clear to her that this was an apex predator, and she was a collection of soft flesh. 

She was not this woman’s prey. Maria met her eyes, blinked slowly, and turned away. “Barton,” she said to the other man in the room. 

“Hey,” Clint greeted her. “Been a while.”

“I see you haven’t changed a bit,” she replied. He shrugged artlessly, the muscles in his arms flexing. 

“Hill, you know Barton,” Fury said needlessly. “This is Natalia Alianova, aka the Black Widow. She’s with us.” Maria did not need him to say _for now_ to know that’s how the sentence ended. 

Maria met Natalia’s eyes again, nodding in greeting. Their gazes held, not a power struggle so much as a sizing-up. Maria focused on evaluating her, but there was a voice in the back of her hear, whispering, _she could eat you alive, little girl, and you would beg her to._

This wasn’t the time, nor the place, nor the woman for that. 

“Nice to put a name to the face,” Maria said, after the moment had passed. 

“The pleasure is mine,” Natalia replied, her voice low, slightly raspy, not at all what Maria was expecting.

“No accent?” she said before thinking.

“No,” Natalia said. “Unless you would prefer me with one? Some people do. Is easier for them, to think of me like stereotype.” The shift had been seamless, and Maria was sure any native Russian speaker would have found it as flawless as her American accent had been to Maria’s ear. 

“Whatever makes you the most comfortable,” Maria said neutrally. Natalia’s eyes cut past her to look at Clint, and there was an entire conversation in the quirk of her eyebrows, the twist of his lips, that Maria wasn’t privy to.

“Hill, I’m assigning you to be Barton and Alianova’s handler,” Fury said, shifting back out of the shadows into the light. Maria hoped he’d teach her that trick someday; it was incredibly effective, even when you were expecting it. 

“Her?” Natalia’s glance at her was just short of scathing, but it was the most emotion she’d displayed yet. 

“I trained Hill personally. She’s an exemplary agent, and an experienced handler.” Flattering, but bit of an exaggeration on both counts. What was he up to?

“I have never had a woman handler before,” Natalia said in her cool even tone. 

“You’ve never done a lot of things the way we do them here,” Fury said. “You’ll adjust.”

“What else?” Clint asked, breaking his characteristic silence. “You’re not telling us something.”

Fury glanced from Clint to Natalia to Maria, and there was something familiar in his eye, something…

“ _Los lobos,_ ” she said, clarity cutting sharp through her thoughts. “That’s what it is, isn’t it.”

Natalia tightened up, ready to fight or flee. It is nearly imperceptible, but Maria thinks that "imperceptible" might describe her default state of being. 

“It’s in my blood,” she said, directly to Natalia. “My mother, my grandfather. It mostly manifests in the men, and is carried by the women.”

Natalia’s gaze sharpened with this new knowledge, and Maria was flayed beneath it. “You?”

“Yes,” Maria said. “ _La sangre de los lobos._ I’m not afraid of it.”

“But are you afraid of me?” Natalia asked.

 _Yes, of course._ Maria shrugged.

“I know that you could kill me, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t think you will, unless you have to, and I’ll do everything I can to make sure you don’t have to.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Clint nod, and slowly, Natalia nodded too. “Yes, she’ll do.”

“Thank you,” Maria said, half-sardonically. 

The tightness in Fury’s face relaxed, just barely perceptibly, and Maria thinks that this can’t have been the first time they’ve done this; this was an interview, and she passed.

“Will that be all for now?” she asked her commanding officer. Fury flicked a hand.

“Hill, dismissed. No, wait, I’m moving you to an office. You’ll need a place to meet. Expect an update shortly. You two, stay put for a second.”

Maria walked out of Fury’s office and waited until she was all the way back to her desk before heaving a deep breath. Well, this was unexpected. She hadn’t thought she’d make full-time handler for another two years at least, and certainly not to one of the best agents and his gorgeous ex-KGB werewolf recruit.

Maria sat down in her familiar chair and started counting her breaths. What the _fuck_ was her life.

Had she really told them about _la sangre_? She’d been sworn to secrecy, same as the others who decided to go out into the wider human world; it was easier for her as a carrier, and not a full Were, and she’d felt so stifled, so trapped there. The only person she’d told was Fury, and that was because she needed to explain why her background check came back so empty. 

And now she’d told two others, one a total stranger and a threat besides, on nothing more than an educated guess. She should not have done that. Her mamá would have her hide for it. 

She heard a rippling hush behind her, and made another educated guess. 

“Did Fury tell you where my new office will be,” she asked without turning around, “or are you here for something else?”

“Your heart rate is elevated,” Natalia said in her rich, even voice. “Are you frightened?”

“No,” Maria said, turning around.

“He didn’t mention it,” Clint said in response to her earlier question. “I- we thought we’d come see if you want to come get lunch with us.”

“It’s barely eleven,” Maria said, then realized. “Oh, metabolism, right. Sure, let me get my things.”

Clint looked relieved. “Great, meet us by the elevator?”

“Be there in a minute,” she said, and the pair of them turned, Natalia shadowing Clint, heads turning to follow them before snapping back to look at Maria. She sighed. 

“Maybe there’ll be alcohol,” she said to herself, wistfully. She could use a shot of something right now. Maybe two.


	3. Chapter 3

Maria ignored the bright-eyed stares of her coworkers, knowing that she would be the next tidbit of watercooler gossip to moment she moved into her new office. And an office, that was no small thing, not for an agent who’d only been in the field four years. Of course, she’d been with SHIELD for longer than that, but training hours don’t count no matter how many of them you put in, much to the chagrin of many graduates. 

Not Maria, though. She’d known better than that. She’d worked everywhere before graduation, so that she could find what suited her best and excel at it, and she had. One of her flings in the Academy had accused her of being calculating, “cold-blooded.” As amusing and novel as that had been for a girl born of _la sangre,_ Maria had only raised an eyebrow and asked what her bedmate had thought they were learning to do there. That girl had washed out. Maria now had an office before five years. 

She took a deep breath and grabbed her coat, striding out past the desks of people who were studiously pretending not to look at her. Natalia and Clint were indeed waiting by the elevator, engaged in a conversation that seemed to be as much physical as verbal. Well, at least they were already a cohesive unit, Maria thought. Made her life as handler easier if she wasn’t required to mediate them. 

Based on the looks they turned on her as she came closer, though, Maria thought she may have to reevaluate that. Natalia was as impassive as ever, but there was tension in her, the slightest furrow in her forehead, the twitch of fingers that longed to be a fist. Clint looked harried.

“What do you want to eat?” Maria asked Natalia. The redhead raised her eyebrows half a centimeter.

“Does it matter?”

“If you don’t care, we can eat in the mess, but I don’t think that’s the right venue for this… meal,” Maria said, clearly meaning _conversation_ without outright saying that she’d rather not be eavesdropped on by every junior analyst who pulled up a chair nearby. 

Natalia seemed pleased by this, or maybe satisfied? 

“Yes. I assume you have recommendations? I have not yet been allowed to learn the area.”

“There’s plenty of places to eat in a three-to-five block radius, depending on what you’re in the mood for. I just got back from Kabul, so the only place off the list is the kabob shop. I’ll take you some other time, they do a great lamb.”

Natalia seemed intrigued. Clint cleared his throat.

“Is anyone going to ask me what I want to eat?”

“No,” Maria said immediately, “because you’ll eat anything, up to and including pig slop, and the rest of us have slightly higher standards than you.”

Natalia’s face betrayed a hint of a smile, and Maria felt a rush of victory.

“You wound me, Hill,” Clint said, thumping his chest with a fist as though pulling an arrow.

“She’s right,” Natalia said. “You have no palate.”

“‘Scuse you,” Clint said, with no heat behind it. “I have an expansive palate.”

“If no one else has an opinion,” Maria cut him off, “there’s an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet a couple blocks from here, they do a great General Tso’s and the momos are to die for.”

All-you-can-eat had been the saving grace of her mother’s pocketbook growing up, what with five kids, three of them _lobos_. She’d seen Clint eat before, and made an educated guess as to Natalia’s own appetites; the quick agreement on their parts proved she wasn’t off the mark. Plus, she was really craving some greasy American-style lo mein. 

“Agreeable,” Natalia said, pushing the button for the elevator. “Clint?”

“I’ll never say no to the Jade Dragon,” Clint said, “especially when I’m not paying.”

“Oh, I’m putting it on the company card,” Maria said, following them into the elevator and pushing the button for the ground floor. “Fury can foot the bill.”

“It’s like I always say,” Clint said sagely to Natalia. “Free food is the best food.”

“You said this to me before,” Natalia said. “But I think you were referring to a sandwich from a dumpster.”

Maria didn’t bother trying to hide her snort of laughter. “You never change, Barton.”

Clint looked from Natalia to Maria and sighed. “You two are already ganging up on me. This is gonna suck.”

“Chin up, _luchnik_ ,” Natalia said. “At least your food will be free.”

“But at what cost?” he said dramatically. Natalia and Maria shared a long-suffering look. Natalia rolled her eyes, the most expressive Maria had seen her yet.

“He is forever like this. Has he always been this way?” she asked Maria.

“Since I’ve known him,” Maria replied.

The women followed Clint out of the elevator and through the lobby out into the crisp DC sunshine. 

“If you’re going to gossip, I’m leaving you behind,” Clint said, striding off purposefully.

“Reconnaissance looks very much like gossip,” Natalia remarked in her cool voice as they followed Clint down the sidewalk. “Men can be so blind.”

“There’s a reason he’s such a good sniper,” Maria said, “and it’s not his people skills.”

Natalia gave Maria an appreciative look as they stopped at a crosswalk, easily keeping up with Clint, who wasn’t much taller than Natalia and was slightly shorter than Maria. 

“The restaurant’s just there,” Maria said, pointing at the sign a block away, sitting low on the building. The Jade Dragon nestled just below street level, and as they drew nearer the ease that had built between the trio dissipated in the chill breeze, leaving only questions.

Clint went down the steps and into the building, and Natalia followed him like a shadow, leaving Maria alone for a bare moment. She took a deep breath, bracing herself, preparing for the meal ahead. Nothing like a getting-to-know-you meal with a couple of spies on your first day back, she told herself. Well, at least the dumplings will be good.

She followed them in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Natalia's nickname for Clint, "luchnik," is a phoenetic spelling of "лучник," which is Russian for... archer. Nothing fancy here! If anyone speaks Russian (or Spanish,) please feel free to drop me a line with notes on my usage, I don't know any Russian and my Spanish was a while ago. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's left me kind words so far! I'm terrible about responding to comments but please know I read each one and keep them close to my heart. You're all so lovely, thank you so much. If you want to talk more, come hang out [over at my tumblr,](http://lovebeyondmeasure.tumblr.com/) where anon is always on. I'd love to chat!
> 
> Onwards!


End file.
